On 60 Minutes on Sunday, Opposition leader Tony Abbott was questioned on his position on homosexuality, with the following response:
LIZ HAYES: Homosexuality? How do you feel about that?
TONY ABBOTT: I’d probably I feel a bit threatened…
LIZ HAYES: I’m not asking if it’s a personal choice of yours.
TONY ABBOTT: ..as so many people.
LIZ HAYES: When you say ‘threatened’?
TONY ABBOTT: Again, Liz, look, it’s a fact of life and I try to treat people as people and not put them in pigeonholes.
It was a strange choice of words. It’s not clear whether he went further into what he meant, whether he was threatened by gay issues as the alternative leader of the country given his well-known views or whether this was simply a “backs against the walls, fellas” response to homosexuality in general from the Mad Monk.
He was asked about those comments on Lateline last night:
LEIGH SALES: On the 60 Minutes program last night Liz Hayes asked you how you felt about homosexuality and you said you’d probably feel a bit threatened, as so many people do. What did you mean?
TONY ABBOTT: Well, it was a spontaneous answer, but the truth is I try to take people as I find them. I’ve always tried to be that way and I hope as I get older I become better at it.
LEIGH SALES: But, I just – I didn’t understand when I was watching the program what the word “threatened” meant, though. Were you making a joke that you feel threatened that men hit onto you, or that you feel that traditional families are threatened? What was “threatened” referring to?
TONY ABBOTT: Well, there is no doubt that it challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things, but as I also said on the program, it happens, it’s a fact of life and we have to treat people as we find them.
“Orthodox notions of the right order of things”? Being gay isn’t like getting an ear piercing or a tattoo that your parents disapprove of, Tony.
He seems to now be backpedalling and his wording has become increasingly confusing and obfuscating but it still seems he is at least unsettled by homosexuality.
There’s that old trope that straight men feel threatened by gay guys as though by even being in the same room as a gay guy, we will obviously want to sleep with you, or try to convert you. It’s one of those annoyingly schoolboy homophobic responses one generally encounters when they first come out.
Or there’s Andrew Bolt’s back-handed defense that somehow wearing speedos perpetuating the stereotype of a “predatory gay with foolish and irresponsible displays like those so often seen in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras” will somehow emasculate all straight men. But gay men are okay, so long as they make music he likes.
Tony, we don’t find you appealling and we certainly don’t want to convert you. And the speedos thing? You started it.
And trust me, that sort of frightening imagery is probably doing more to convert homosexual men to the straight and narrow than you could ever dream of.
